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filling the bag while
Celia disappeared into the shower.
The matron didn't gave Veronica a second glance when she came out of the
bathroom with
Celia's bag on one hand and holding Celia's handkerchief to her face with the
other. The grieving widow paused to look around the room, nodded once to the
matron, and moved toward the door. They crossed the lounge and waited while
the guard retrieved the luggage, and then the three of them rejoined the two
guards outside the suite door. The party then reformed and began descending
the stairs. -
Celia waited for a few minutes to give anybody a chance to come back for
something, then stepped from the shower, found the clothes that Veronica had
left, and spent a few minutes putting them on and lacing the boots. Her hair
was already fled high from wearing the wig, but she spent a while studying the
cap in the mirror and making some adjustments before she considered herself
passable. She was just walking back into the bedroom to wait when she heard
the door on the far side of the lounge open, and immediately the suite was
filled with the sounds of bodies moving around and voices calling to each
other. A few seconds later Colman appeared in the doorway from the lounge.
Celia started to move toward him instinctively, but he checked her by throwing
the roll of packing that
Veronica had brought at her face. "You're in the Army," he said gruffly as she
caught it. "Move your ass."
It was the right thing to do. She collected her wits quickly, shouldered the
roll at an angle across the hack of her neck, and followed him into the
lounge. Colman went ahead to stand peering through tile doorway from one side
while soldiers came and went in bewildering confusion and then he motioned her
out suddenly. In a strangely dreamlike way she found herself being conveyed
down. the stairway between two soldiers who were keeping up a steady exchange
about something not being large enough and a typical screw-up somewhere, and
then she was outside and crossing the rear parking area toward a personnel
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carrier standing a short distance back behind some other vehicles. Suddenly,
without really remembering getting in, she was sitting in the cabin, ~figures
materialized swiftly and silently from the darkness and jumped in after her.
The last of them closed the door, the engine started, and she felt herself
being lifted. Only then did she start shaking.
"Never say you don't get anything back for your taxes." Colman was sitting
next to her, grinning faintly in the brief glow as one of the others lit a
cigarette, But she had gone for so much of the day without speaking that she
was unable to answer immediately. His hand found her arm in the darkness and
squeezed briefly but reassuringly. "It'll be okay," he murmured. 'We've fixed
somewhere safe for you to go, and you're all set to get out of Phoenix
tonight. I'll be coming with you into Franklin?'
"What about Veronica?' she whispered.
"One of our units at the base is expecting her. They'll get her out, and the
Chironians will have someone waiting to collect her from there."
Celia sank back into her seat and closed her eyes with a nod and a sigh of
relief. One of the figures in the darkness wanted to know how come somebody
called Stanislau knew how to fly something like this; Another voice replied
that his father used to steal them from the government
Colman stared at Celia for a few seconds longer. He still didn't know why
Celia should have been so anxious to get away from Sterm or why she should
have been in any danger. Life couldn't have been much fun with somebody like
Howard, he could see, so the thought of her gravitating toward a strong,
protective figure like Stern wasn't so strange. And it didn't seem so
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teryear.txt unnatural that she should have stayed near Sterm after Howard was
killed. In such circumstances it would have been normal to provide her with an
escort down to the surface too, for her own security; but having her watched
all the time and not allowing her contact with anybody made no sense. Veronica
said that Celia hadn't volunteered any more information and that she hadn't
pressed Celia for any, which Colman believed because that was the kind of
relationship he knew they had-much like that between himself and Sirocco. But
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